workshops for children — grades 1-3

Our Featured Artist – Henri Matisse, 1864-1954

The book oooh! Matisse by Mil Niepold and Jeanyves Verdu opened our session together. A colorful book that shows snippets of shapes and asks the question What is This? The girls enjoyed guessing what the bigger picture might be. A fun way to introduce Henri Matisse and his love of color and his work with paper cut-outs. Matisse spent the majority of his artist life drawing and painting, but for our session together we focused on the latter part of his artist life where he spent a lot of time on his paper cut-outs.

The girls had an opportunity to go on a “gallery walk” and view a small portion of Matisse’s work from various art books. We came together again to learn more about Matisse and his work. I read from a book called Drawing with Scissors by Keesia Johnson and Jane O’Connor. Keesia is a young girl who wrote a report on Matisse and the book is part of the Smart about Art series. I explained the art project they would be working on as well. I found an art activity packet at the Denver Art Museum that supplied some pieces of very colorful paper as long as some shapes to be traced and cut out. I went to the art store to add some additional brightly colored paper and the girls began the hard work of tracing and cutting many colored shapes. They glued their cut-out shapes on white illustration board. The result was beautiful, colorful, and each girl had a unique Matisse-inspired art. I think Matisse would have been proud!

My own little Matisse, Asher. I brought home this project for Asher to do. I provided Asher the cut-out shapes, a combination of color and shapes from the activity pack and ones that the girls did on their own. Asher chose the color of cut-outs, where to put the shapes and even named his piece “Wetland.” I think I might have a go at this project next. 🙂